


Go Where You're Happy, Go Where You're Wanted

by KissingForeignFishes



Category: South Park
Genre: 1960s British Schoolboys AU, Alternate Universe - 1960s, Car Sex, Established Relationship, Fluff and Smut, Kenny's all kinds of pretentious, M/M, The Smiths lyrics in abundance, Underage Smoking, unapologetic fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-13
Updated: 2015-01-13
Packaged: 2018-03-07 10:21:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,821
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3171311
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KissingForeignFishes/pseuds/KissingForeignFishes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kenny recites poetry, Craig pretends to not enjoy it, and the world keeps spinning madly toward the future. 1960s British Schoolboys AU</p>
            </blockquote>





	Go Where You're Happy, Go Where You're Wanted

**Author's Note:**

> Late submission to the Secret Santa I joined, written for James. He wanted, and I quote, "Crenny going at it like dogs." Wish granted.
> 
> I highly suggest reading this to The Smith’s album “The Queen Is Dead”, both because it fits the tone I'm trying to set and it's a brilliant album.
> 
> Merry (late) Christmas, James and everyone.

They meet on Sundays at the cemetery gates, and Craig understand exactly why he goes along with it. He made his way along Southern’s iron fence, bells of mass ripping the silence of the morning apart. Quiet, lost to his thoughts, having slipped from his family who knew nothing of his true plans but of his fake ones to enjoy the summer day with friends.

 

Partially fake, then.

 

The sun beat down and he shifted out of his good sweater, wrapping it instead around his waist. He would need to iron it later, but it didn’t matter much right now. He made it to the gate in little time despite his leisureliness, and he didn’t even have to wait as he approached the boy already there.

 

“You survived.”

 

Kenny. Thin and wrapped in an old tattered sweater, slacked shoulders, greased down golden hair with a cig hanging loose on his lips. Smoke in a released breath coiled like fingers through his bangs, and Craig swallowed back against the jumble in his guts at the mere sight of him with his awful grin and freckled nose and his eyes as bright and reflective as the dreaded sunny sky above.

 

Craig took it in, happily took the cig when it was handed over, a fairing from a fairing himself.

 

“You make it sound like it’s torture,” he muttered out under his breath, taking in a good mouthful of tobacco. It was the freshest he’d felt all morning.

 

The blond at his side did not relinquish his smile, but let it grow as he watched Craig with loving interest. His affection was clear, almost tangible with how alive it was. “Isn’t it?”

 

As with everything, Kenny had a point to his avoidance of church. The McCormicks, as desolate as they were in their impoverishment, in their depravity, still attended regular mass. Even the brother, certainly doomed to some cruel afterlife with what he got up to in his spare time, made it to the pew every Sunday morning.

 

But not Kenny.

 

Craig snorted, tried handing back the stoke but was denied with a neutral gesture, a narrowing of eyes and the shake of his head.

 

“You should try it sometime,” were his eventual words.

 

An inhale, and Kenny addressed him with soft but false concern. “What?”

 

Exhale, and Craig’s mind cleared. “Take a shot at saving your wretched soul.”

 

This pulled a laugh, sweet and almost innocent, from the depths of Kenny’s lungs.

 

“I’ve tried,” he replied, sounding genuine. “It’s not for me.”

 

Craig finished the cig with a final puff and crushed the butt against the gatepost before abandoning it to the pavement. Kenny maneuvered his way inside first, holding the iron gate open just slightly for his companion before shutting the both of them inside.

 

“Not sure if it’s entirely for you, either,” he continued with a laugh, a coy finger moving to graze just so at Craig’s arm as he passed him by, and the dark-haired boy fought back a blush as well he could. "Though I'd love to see you all sibylline, reclining on the pew."

 

Southern Cemetery was nothing to Craig in most regards. He lived close, barely any ways at all, and passed it what seemed like daily. School, church, sports with friends at the park, walks along the bridges and train tracks. Southern meant to him only two things otherwise; his grandmum, buried out with her own mum somewhere, and Kenny’s unabashed fascination with it and everything it held.

 

Everybody it held.

 

“No, I know exactly where my wretched soul is going,” Kenny finished, as light as air on his feet. “And it is neither Hell nor Heaven.”

 

Craig snorted, rolling his eyes upwards to watch the clouds in their movement. “I’m afraid to ask.”

 

“I wouldn’t bother, it’s not that interesting.”

 

“You’re fucken mental, McCormick,” was the reply, not malicious but pointed out as one would assess that the sky was blue. It got Kenny smiling like the Devil.

 

“And you fancy me all the more for it, love.”

 

The suggestion, clear as it was, was meant only for these times they were alone. Even amongst friends, other students who probably already knew, they could do almost nothing of the sort. Here, alone in the hills of Southern, they were free to be at least a touch inappropriate.

 

Kenny stepped closer, touched their shoulders together in a tenderness that forced Craig’s feet to stop entirely and Kenny followed. They stood before a set of tombstones, carved with dates and names altogether irrelevant. Neither of them knew these people in any shape or form, but it was them who inspired an improvised bout of poetry.

 

“ _Loves and lives and passions akin to mine, and yet I am here and they there, and to the living it is unfair_ ,” the blond recited, his tone soft and strong with enviable confidence. “ _Born and lived just to die, so unfair that I could sob and cry_.”

 

And, as though those were the most romantic words he could ever hear, Craig dropped his careful mask. He grabbed at Kenny’s shirt sleeves and hands as he pulled him behind a tree boarding along a grove, beyond the sight of the empty cemetery, to bring their lips together in something heated and fulfilling. Hiding, perhaps, from the spirits of those around them as they curled lovingly into one another’s arms.

 

Kenny did not seem shocked or anything beyond pleased as he kissed back with just as much fervor, if not more, digging wild fingers into the fabric of Craig’s undershirt and pressing along him ‘til they met at every angle in an awkward fumble against the trunk.

 

They both tasted like cigarettes.

 

Once apart, though only by their lips and only to keep breathing, Kenny moved to brush his mouth against the cherished skin of Craig’s neck. “I missed you,” he breathed, and Craig responded with a gentle moan, a shifting of his legs.

 

Minutes passed and they pulled away begrudgingly. Later, perhaps. There was always later.

 

“You are so pretentious,” Craig stated plainly as Kenny stopped them to observe a gravestone he’d yet to read. It caught the blond off guard, and he raised his eyes and brows in wait for an answer. Craig could not help but smile, if just a bit. “Your poetry.”

 

With his reply, Kenny rolled his eyes up toward the Heavens. “There’s a difference between pretension and art, Craig, and my poetry is _art_. Pretentious is when you claim to understand something you really don’t. To impress people. I don’t got anyone to impress here, now do I.”

 

His grin was toothy, wild, and Craig rolled his eyes. A lie so obvious, he didn’t even need to pretend otherwise.

 

“Really.” Not a question, not really much of anything. Filler, he figured, to cover up the fact that the day was proving to be pleasing for him.

 

They meandered about the graves with no goal in sight, frustrating Craig originally, when they had first begun these cemetery scavenger hunts months before, as though they were again boys in search of something beyond tombstones. Now it seemed not to register to him at all. The sound of songbirds overhead proved as good as basic conversation in their silence, something the two had long since grown past, but as they turned to head north along the path, through the grass and graves, Kenny decided to ask a question.

 

“So what’d you hear about today?”

 

Craig did not ask Kenny why he did not attend church, as he’d never much cared. He sighed, and wanted both another cig and another go at Kenny’s lips, but held back to answer.

 

“Inner strength. Being nice to your fellow man, and how it all makes you better.”

 

A hum from Kenny’s throat, contemplative. “And did you learn anything?”

 

“Nothin’ I didn’t know already,” Craig said, shaking his head.

 

Kenny listened to his words, processed them internally and produced nothing more than another of his sweet hums in return.

 

“I could stand to have something make me better, someone,” he said after a brief pause, almost to himself. “I mean, what’ll I do with myself if the stogies don’t kill me?”

 

“You’re so fucken good at your poetry, you could do that.” Craig had said this with sarcasm, but, in all honesty, it was far from a lie. Kenny was an incredibly gifted person, but his boredom, a boredom he often reflected on when they discussed school, forced him to perform on levels of mediocrity. Craig differed there, he fit his role of student and did his best, produced good marks, unproblematic for a hopes of good schooling for university.

 

Anything to get the fuck out of Manchester.

 

“Nobody’s payin’ for my poetry,” Kenny sighed, long-since defeated when it came to that particular thought. “No matter how good it is. Nobody’s reading poetry anymore.” Craig’s eyes returned to his companion as an arm was snaked around his shoulders and snared at his neck, leaning their faces closer and closer.

 

“Didn’t ya hear?” Kenny murmured against him with a chaste peck to his cheek. Craig instinctively moved to look around them, to make sure no one had seen, and was met only with faceless gravestones in place of prying eyes. “They say romance is dead.”

 

An hour flew by and they explored most of the outer edge of the cemetery, having discussed poetry, then Richard Yates and John Keats and how their work was unapologetically emotional compared to the satire and sarcasm that was Oscar Wilde’s work. They spoke of food, of Dante’s Inferno and which level of Hell they would themselves fall into with their individual sins taken into account, of the ever growing popularity of The Beatles and pot smoking in America, and, finally, of school, of the future, before the conversation died down.

 

School was not an easy subject to discuss with Kenny, the idea of university or employment, because, frankly, neither of them wanted that discussion in their lives. It tore apart the seams of a life they’d fallen to the rhythm of, disrupting the quiet with the noise of inevitable change.

 

And change was difficult to adapt to.

 

“Why do we come here?”

 

Craig asked this as he sat in the grass, watching Kenny curled and comfortable at his side. Close, but not touching.

 

“You wanna stop?” Kenny asked, only half-listening and definitely not serious. He looked distant, in thought, and he did not move away when Craig grabbed at his hand with his own. Craig did not give an answer, so the blond continued instead of waiting longer for one that wasn’t coming.

 

“What else can we do?” He stretched out his legs, eyes leveled at his feet. “I do it ‘cause I feel wanted here. Happy. The company, both dead and alive. It’s my riches, it is.”

 

Manchester was almost entirely poor, Craig knew. Everyone knew. The north struggled after the war, brought to a stale point in their economy as many suffered the devastating loss of fathers and sons, family lost to gunshots and bombs and gas. It stung even after a good fifteen years. And Kenny’s family, the McCormicks, were so dirt poor that Kenny very likely did regard these walks and conversations as his only treasures.

 

Craig said none of this aloud, and instead kept their fingers laced warmly together. They pointed out the details in the headstones that caught their eyes to one another.

 

“Poor bastard died on Christmas,” Kenny said, regarding the grave of Arthur Watson, and he was right, died of Pneumonia December 25th, 1931. Craig wondered if Arthur Watson had any idea that he was going to die on Christmas day, if he ever pictured, more than thirty years later, two boys of sixteen acknowledging him and his existence specifically because of that.

 

Craig again said nothing, and Kenny turned to him.

 

“Are you bored?”

 

“Not more than usual,” he answered. “Why?”

 

Kenny suddenly stood, eyes focused and thoughtful as he pulled Craig with him.

 

“Anyone expecting you?” he asked, and Craig shook his head.

 

“Not all day.”

 

“Good.” He was grinning, but something was different, it wasn’t reaching his eyes. “Spend it with me?”

 

His words were sweet with promises left unvoiced, and Craig did not protest when Kenny dropped the connection of their hands to thrust his own into the pockets of his trousers. Something about the way Kenny was acting set off a few alarms, but Craig allowed it with a shrug, feigning disinterest.

 

“As if you’d let me say no.”

 

They left Southern with not so much as a backward glance, wandered about the streets busy with children at play, chatting mothers with their demanding infants, wives hanging out the laundry to dry. Everyone was out to enjoy the rarity of a hot sun.

 

The day proved a meandering one, and once the sun has set against the bricks and muted colour of the suburbs, the two found themselves embracing in the back of the Tucker family automobile while his parents and sister were home just steps away. Regardless, they were safe where they were parked along the driveway, hidden by the cloak of night. Kenny had spent the day in a quiet contemplative state, as though only his body were there, and Craig had allowed it rub uncomfortable between them.

 

Here they kissed, as before, their feelings imprinted on the other with slight bites and curious hands, but Kenny held back. Rare of him, he was usually the initiator, the rudding flirtatious bastard that he was, and here he was blinking lidded eyes and moaning soft against Craig’s more prominent movements with all the reservation of a virgin.

 

When he spoke next, he had pulled them apart, arms coming up to rest palms against Craig’s shoulders. To push him back if need be.

 

“Craig, we need to talk.” It was almost a whisper, and Craig’s heart launched to his throat.

 

“Why? Somethin’ wrong?”

 

“I think so. I feel…” A pause, Kenny looked away, out the window and into the world outside made black by nightfall, biting at his bottom lip. Finally a sigh, a deep one that drew a shiver through Craig’s being.

 

It took a minute for Kenny to work up the power to speak again. “We have to stop.”

 

Four words, each as simple as the last, but it was enough to draw Craig’s veins to ice. Kenny wouldn’t look at him, kept his eyes at anything but him, and Craig tried making sense of it all.

 

“Stop? Ken, what-?”

 

“I can’t have you,” Kenny snapped, interrupting, harsher than he’d wanted it to be. He sounded as though he were choking back a sob, and Craig’s confused expression became one of distress as Kenny took his hands away and moved back entirely. “And it’s drivin’ me _mad_.”

 

Craig blinked in surprise, the sudden loss of warmth striking him the same as if his heart had permanently stopped. “You’ve got me,” he replied, voice breaking in confusion, and Kenny shook his head.

 

“Not for long.” His eyes flashed back up in less than seconds, desperate to meet Craig’s again as he forced a smile. “There ain’t a hope in the world for me, Tucker. Not with that Christian God of yours or the dead or even the livin’. I gotta do it myself. Gotta do my best, not to drag you down.”

 

The words stung, and Craig was shaking his head now, pushing forward just so to be reassuring. At first he thinks it’s about wealth. His family certainly wasn’t rich, but they had money. Kenny never cared about money, Craig even less so. That couldn’t possibly be what this was about.

 

“‘Cause I’ve been thinkin’ about it,” Kenny continued. “We’ll be adults soon. Considering the future and whatnot. You’re a smart boy, Tucker, and you should be going to school. But I can’t go with you.” He paused, smile aware of himself and what he was saying. “Drag you down.”

 

Craig listened, wondered where the fuck this had come from, and he shook his head. He had figured Kenny wouldn’t not be attending university, but he’d never thought that reason enough to break their relationship off. “You won’t-”

 

“ _Love is natural, and real_.” It was more reciting, more poetry. The words sounded as if they were drowning in their own sorrow. “ _You need me more than you love me_.”

 

Craig opened his mouth to retort, his eyes unable to leave Kenny’s, and instead of an argument, a weak and frail ghost of a thing escaped his lungs. He squeezed his eyes shut, fighting back a dry sob. Kenny was serious.

 

“Fuck, Ken. Don’t.” He grabbed for Kenny’s hand and he held it sweetly against his face, his lips. He kissed the skin there.

 

He recalled their first kiss in a toilet stall at school, the looks Broflovski and Marsh and Cartman and the rest of them would give when the two sat together during lunch, wrapped up in everything but arms, the times they played truant to kiss at each other’s skin in the park. The times they made love, in the back of the Tucker family saloon, the banger it was, others in Craig’s bed when they were alone in the house. Those and every awkward fumble in between.

 

Illness, this was called. He should want to be clutched at by a girl, soft curves and full lips and knee-high stockings, but it was Kenny’s gangly arms in which he found his comfort. There was life in being held by Kenny, to kiss along his jaw and listen to his utterly pretentious poetry. And Craig can’t for the life of him understand how one could call this ill of the mind. Kenny was like the stogs, clearing his head, helpin’ him breath.

 

Slowly killing him, in the best way possible.

 

“You’ve a future,” Kenny was saying, trying to explain himself as best he could while his voice and limbs shook with distress. “I don’t. We can’t kid ourselves anymore, love, though I desperately wish we could.”

 

Craig wanted nothing more than to lean forward, to touch him, but he found that Kenny’s almost too-honest face was keeping him back.

 

“What will you do, then?” he asked after a brutal hesitation, honestly curious but dark in the frantic movements he kept hidden behind his eyes. He didn’t let go of Kenny’s hand.

 

Kenny looked away again and took a deep breath, letting it out slowly. “I’ve been saving up the pounds I get here and there. Gonna get myself a train ticket down to Paris. Get the fucken hell out of fucken Manchester.” His lips upturned into a smile, but it was shortlived. “Kyle’s goin’ to some fancy school down south, Stan’s got rugby, and Cartman, well, fuck knows what he’s doing. But I’ve got my plans, trust me.”

 

“Then I’ll go with you.”

 

Kenny turned back to find that Craig hadn’t yet looked away from him, staring at him with such a ferocious assurance that it dashed whatever Kenny had been planning on saying.

 

“I’ve money, too,” Craig continued, his jaw set with how serious he was. “We can get down to London, take the train to France, start something for ourselves there, and-”

 

“Craig.”

 

It was the quiet desperation that forced his words back, that rendered him speechless. Their eyes met, and it took all of Kenny’s strength to flash a loving smile.

 

“Don’t waste yourself on me.”

 

Craig had nothing he could say to that, unaware of an answer that could combat it, convinced an answer couldn’t possibly exist. It clung to him like tar burning into his skin, and he was sure it hurt far worse than the slow suffocation of being tarred to death ever could.

 

But Kenny kept going, visibly calming down. “Go to university, get your good scores and your job. You’ll marry, just wait, a pretty girl from the south, and you’ll have pretty children and you’ll forget me.”

 

When Craig considered the future, Kenny was always in it in some form or another, and the idea that this thought had not been mutual hurt. They’d kept themselves secret even up until this point, they’d learned to skirt around parents and siblings and friends alike to find the time for one another, perhaps they could keep that going until they didn’t have a reason to.

 

“Why…” Craig’s voice trailed off, his thoughts raging, incoherent. Kenny sat in silence, face trained to a neutral expression.

 

He tried again. “How could I forget you Kenny, you can’t…” He scrambled to find the right words, his hands now clutching at the one he held so close, and he forced their eyes together with a squeeze. “Life ain’t worth shit without you.”

 

Kenny searched Craig’s eyes for something; sincerity, maybe, or doubt, but he wouldn’t find any. Eventually, he shook his head. “But I’m right, aren’t I?”

 

Of course he was, but there was still room to try.

 

Craig hadn’t an inkling of what he was meant to do. Kenny was slipping away from him slowly but surely even with their closeness and he _couldn’t even touch him_ , it was maddening. A light suddenly flashed beyond them and grabbed his attention, the porch light. His parents were calling for him to come back home without realizing that he was already there but in hiding, and he swallowed back a lump clogging his throat.

 

“I’ve gotta go,” he explained, voice weak. “My folks…” He was close to tears, a wretched state he wanted nothing of. Kenny sat patiently at his side, watching, hoping for something, but when he attempted to pull his hand from Craig’s grasp, he found himself pulled back entirely.

 

“No,” Craig growled, bringing Kenny’s hand back to his mouth. One kiss, another, and he brought his gaze up to lock firmly with the blond’s. “Fuck it, Ken, and fuck everything else. We could do it, just the two of us.”

 

He was almost crazed, and Kenny looked genuinely surprised. “What about your parents?” he asked. “School? Craig, you can’t just-”

 

“Like I said, fuck ‘em!” Craig almost shouted, his mind set on his decision in the distraught hope that it would fix every single one of the problems they had.

 

Kenny saw his irrationality and shook his head, biting at his bottom lip and fought his urge to agree. “You’re not thinking clearly. You’re upset, and you need to sit, and to breath and to _think_ , Tucker, for fuck’s sake.”

 

“You’ve got me, Kenny,” he growled, reaching to clutch so desperately at the blond’s shoulders and back, drawing their chests together. “You’ve got me, don’t think for a fucken second that you don’t.”

 

“Craig…” He was cut off by a kiss, one he attempted to resist but quickly fell to. It was as frantic as Craig’s proclamations of abandoning everything, of giving it all up for a youthful passion that had kept the two of them happy, alive. They remained there for what felt like hours, no needy with rubs and soft moans, the kisses that lead to sex, but daring and dangerous. Ruin and wreckage, just as possible as prosperity, and Kenny allowed himself pinned back by hands that roamed his arms in adoration, arched lovingly against the seat of the car.

 

It was a promise, a declaration, one to keep Kenny there and in his arms and life for as long as he could.

 

“We’ll make love,” Craig said, a suggestion. Giving Kenny a clear out should he want it. “Think, relax. Plan.” He brought their noses together and brushed the hair out of Kenny’s face, blue on gray even in the near darkness.

 

“Please, Ken. I won’t lose you here, not now, not like this.” And he closed the distance between them.

 

Sex implores them to let themselves, to lose themselves, and they take full use of each other. As they kiss, let it deepen heavily, their arms strune about the saloon seat, Kenny nodded into the crook of Craig’s neck.

 

“Okay.” It’s a sob, and then another. “Okay, yes, god, yes.”

 

It’s an invitation that Craig gladly accepts, his hand moving its way up the front of Kenny’s shirt, along the soft and dirty skin of his torso. Kenny’s fingers, skillful and adored for it, rake his dark hair, cup at his face to deepen the kiss there, and he moves to pull at the old belt latched around Craig’s hips. A hand-me-down from his dad, a man just inside, such a short ways away, a man who’d beat his bared ass with that belt should he know what his son was gettin’ up to in the backseat of his saloon.

 

Kenny had underestimated himself, all his talk of wasting himself on him, and Craig wanted to do everything in his power to destroy that poisonous thought forever. Another swift peck at Kenny’s accepting mouth and he moves lower, crouching himself against the front seat’s back, a kiss to the front of Kenny’s trousers. As their eyes met Kenny grinned, one that finally caught in his eyes, and Craig rubbed tenderly along his flat stomach, his parting thighs before working at the zipper.

 

He took Kenny into his mouth with a quickness even the blond was shocked by. From above Kenny gasped and let his eyes drift close, toes curling along Craig’s legs as his fingers combed so softly in the truffs of black hair atop his head. Craig brought him in further, licking along the skin there, base to tip in loving, adoring, detailed movements of worship. Kenny, beautiful Kenny with his wicked grin and bright eyes, fast fingers, talented, humble, loving Kenny. This was Craig giving back, reassuring the blond that yes, god, yes, he was worth worshiping, worth keeping, worth risking the future for.

 

A minute went by as Craig kept at it, feeling Kenny growing harder with every deep throated suck, every pull or lick along him, the reel around the fountain, and Craig himself was getting there with the help of the succulent little sounds emitting from Kenny’s throat. He did his best to keep still, clutching at the seat’s materials and edges, curling his legs around Craig’s middle, curses falling like hymns from his lips.

 

With a final suck inward, causing Kenny to gasp and moan heavily, Craig released him and crawled his way over him, happy to let Kenny grope at his trousers as he kissed deeply around Craig’s much-loved neck after slipping from his trousers and pants both. He felt the laudation and wished to reciprocate.

 

Positions were wordlessly agreed upon as they did what came naturally, and Craig bit back a trembling moan when Kenny’s fingers found their way beneath the band of his trousers, stroking and cupping at him beneath the fabric. Kenny laughed despite himself at the face Craig made, and he moved in such a rhythm that Craig swore he was close to tears, the second time this evening and both through entirely different means.

 

Another of Kenny’s lovely smiles, like a gift, and he fumbled to grab at his jeans to pull something out of the pocket while Craig pushed his pants down to his knees. Both desperate and needy, Kenny still brought whatever it was up for Craig’s eyes with a wicked grin.

 

A tube of hand lotion, never used. It was placed in Craig’s fingers.

 

“You…” A groan interrupted him, small and barely audible, before he continued. “You’ve got-”

 

“Figured I’d be needin’ it,” Kenny said, another laugh leaving him as Craig leaned in for a deep kiss. “Swiped it from marketplace this morning.”

 

“You’re fucken mental, Ken,” Craig sighed against his cheek, his tone so alight with love that the actual words barely registered with either of them. He opened the tube, fumbled to get the lotion out while Kenny waited with a patient smirk beneath him, and his pace only slowed when Kenny again moved along his length. Craig managed it off after another few awkward moments, offered it out to Kenny to take into his own hands, and the blond accepted.

 

He watched, so in love with Kenny in this moment, as the blond took to coating his fingers in the white ointment, his movements slow. Then he drifted lower, between them, and he worked himself open with a gasp that shook Craig to his core. It was rapture watching Kenny, lovely, beautiful Kenny, gently thrust inside himself with only the lotion and anticipation to sooth him or make it easier, their bodies barely contained on the seat. If this was not what the afterlife in God’s care was like, then there was no point to ever going as far as he was concerned.

 

Kenny was close, whimpering in the half-nude, rutting against Craig just so as his legs again snaked around his hips. Their gazes connected and Kenny pulled his fingers free of himself, instead taking hold of Craig’s length, pumping it with his palm as the lotion smeared over his skin, and they both knew that they could not wait any longer. Craig dropped the tube to the floor in a rush of movement, grabbed at Kenny’s shoulders, pulling him up just so slightly and settling between his knees.

 

“You’ve got me,” he repeated in a whisper, and without further hesitation he aligned himself and pushed it.

 

“ _Fuck_!” Kenny cursed, voice strained and Craig grinned, biting down at the tip of Kenny’s round ear as he kept going, burying himself as far as physically allowed, himself compressed and Kenny spit. Arms wrapped around Craig’s shoulders, nails clawing mercilessly at the skin beneath his shirt, fuck, his shirt, he regretted leaving it on, not stripping bare. His shirt brushed with Kenny’s sweater full of holes as their mouths met, wet with thick saliva, and once completely immersed within Kenny and his blessed heat, he began moving.

 

They’d know each other both ways before, had long since learned the patterns or touches that would drive the other to make the loveliest little noises, and Craig wanted Kenny to feel love with every thrust inward, want with every moan and shiver of unparalleled joy, wanted him to forget that he had ever considered himself worth so little in the first place.

 

Kenny’s face was flushed, eyes closed, and he sat all the way up to lean his face into Craig’s neck and shoulder, their chests and stomach together.“Craig, ah!”

 

Minutes of thrusts, hitting firm against Kenny’s prostate, and a collection of sounds from the both of them until Craig couldn’t stand it any longer. He reached his climax first as he came inside of Kenny, but instead of relaxing back, he moved to stroke at Kenny and help him finish, his lips finding the blond’s mouth, kissing the corners before sliding along his jaw and ear.

 

“I fucken love you, Kenny,” he muttered, earning a moan in return. “Fuck, I love you.”

 

With that, Kenny climaxed in Craig’s hand with a laugh. They lay there twisted together, catching their breath, before Kenny mumbled,

 

“Get out, my leg’s crampin’.”

 

Their first bout of lovemaking, as awkward as that had been, ended prematurely when Craig got a massive cramp in his own leg, and here, soft and relaxed with the peace of climax, they were both reminded of the same memory. Craig chuckled and did as he was asked, feeling grossly sore and used but all the better for it.

 

They cleaned as best they could, shifting about but never leaving the warmth of each other, as Craig pulled his trousers up again and Kenny wiped at himself with the inside of his sweater. Their arms found each other soon enough, and in the post haze of sex, Craig was certain that his future was worth nothing if Kenny was not a part of it.

 

The blond was nuzzling against him, grunting in contentment when Craig’s hands fell to the small of his back.

 

“ _The world may end in the nighttime_ ,” he said, resting his head against Craig’s collarbone. No, Craig corrected. He was reciting. More of that blessed damned poetry of his. “ _The world may end in the daytime, and, oh we really don’t know, and the bomb will bring us all together_.”

 

It was queer, Craig, considered, having thoughts of nuclear war after making love in the backseat of his father’s car, but it made perfect sense to him in that moment as he lay in Kenny’s gangly and welcoming arms. The shortness of life, the possibility of the end biting at all of them at every second. If death was always this close, this unsure and unstoppable, then there existed no point to ending anything worth fighting for over something as daft as the future.

 

“If the bomb drops and the hours I’ve spent at mass pay off well enough, if my soul ascends to Heaven, I will not know peace if you aren’t there with me.” He searches the expression Kenny makes, a thoughtful, careful one, and he kisses the point of his nose before continuing. Not poetry, but close enough. “And I would follow you past Heaven and Hell and to wherever you would go. A minute or eternity, Ken, they would be the same and both just as fucken awful if we weren’t together.”

 

Kenny’s expression didn’t change for a moment before it softened. He sat up a bit, arms coming up around Craig’s neck, and he forced their eyes together.

 

“And if I wanted to leave?” he asked, genuine. “Hypothetically, if I was to leave this shithole without you. What would you do?”

 

“Let you, ‘course,” Craig hummed without hesitation, bringing up a hand to ruffle it through Kenny’s golden hair matted down with sweat from both earlier that day and that night. Their gazes did not separate.

 

“I love you, Ken. If we go together, we go together. If not…” He paused, didn’t want to think on that, but he kept himself going. “I trust you, you can take care of yourself. I’d just hope you’d write. Wouldn’t forget me.”

 

Another short pause, only to tighten his hold, not smothering, just close. “But I want to fight for this. I want you with me, reciting your poetry and reading off gravestones. Telling me about whatever poet you’ve become obsessed over. Anything you’d like.”

 

It must have been the answer Kenny had been hoping for, that or one that he had been thoroughly impressed by, as he crushed their mouths together in a savage thing that lit their ears red.

 

“You’re incorrigible, Tucker,” he snickered once they’d parted. “I spent today sad beyond belief, and here you are telling me it was all for naught.”

 

Happy to have reversed that, Craig kissed Kenny’s hair, their fingers together. “Tomorrow. Meet me at the cemetery gates tomorrow, and we’ll plan.”

  
Kenny rested his head against him, growing smile felt against the skin. “Tomorrow, then.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> The Smith's song “Cemetry Gates” (of which much of this fic is inspired by) is about the plagiarism of other's work for the sake of your own "art", so, hey, thematic. I left their fate open so you can decide what happens to them however you want. As for me, I was very tempted to give them a sad ending where Craig went to university and they lost touch, but if you want them to go to Paris and become bohemians who never tire of one another, be my guest.


End file.
